FOI 1026/26
REQUEST
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, please provide the following held by South Wales Police on illegal streaming devices and services (modified Fire TV Sticks, Android/IPTV boxes, illegal IPTV subscriptions), covering financial years 2020/21-2024/25, broken down by year:
Number of illegal streaming devices seized, by year.
Number of cautions, charges, prosecutions and convictions relating to the sale or supply of such devices/services, by year.
Where recorded, the legislation relied on (e.g. Fraud Act 2006, Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008).
Where this doesn't exceed the cost limit, a breakdown by postcode area/district and/or nearest town or city where each seizure/case occurred (in addition to, or instead of, [BCU/policing district for police, or ward for councils]), to support geographic mapping.
RESPONSE
Your request for information has now been considered, and I am not obliged to supply the information you have requested.
Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires South Wales Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you the applicant with a notice which:
(a) states that fact,
(b) specifies the exemption in question and
(c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.
In relation to your request, the following exemption applies:
Section 12(1) – Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit.
At South Wales Police we monitor and collate statistical data on crimes, incidents and other data relevant to our daily business. The predominant purpose of this is to identifying pattern and trends, so resource allocation and policies can be managed to ensure public safety. The data you have requested is not routinely collated in the format that would easily answer your query.
Unfortunately, there is not a specific crime or offence code for illegal streaming. Therefore, in order to answer your request, a search has been conducted on our crime and incident recording system (Niche RMS) for all occurrences recorded under the occurrence type ‘Fraud & Forgery’ where ‘South Wales’ is selected as the owning agency between 1st April 2020 to 31st March 2025.
This search retrieved 4,667 results.
We estimate that it would take approximately 2 – 3 minutes to individually interrogate each occurrence in order to establish their relevance and to retrieve the details requested.
We therefore estimate that it would take in excess of 155 hours to answer your request.
It is estimated that the cost of providing you with the information is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the "appropriate level" as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.
In the case of the police service, the appropriate limit is £450 which has been calculated to equate to a total of 18 hours of work.
If any part of the request exceeds the fees limit then Section 12 applies to the whole request.
In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a refusal notice.
Excess cost removes the forces obligation under the Freedom of Information Act, however under Section 16 – Duty to provide advice and assistance, an authority is required to offer an applicant the opportunity to redefine their request within the cost limit. You may wish to contact Report Fraud who may hold information to answer your request.
For ease, their link is provided below:
UK's Home for Reporting Cyber Crime & Fraud - Report Fraud
Report Fraud receive reports relating to cyber-crime and fraud. The service is run by the City of London Police. Their Analysis Services team are responsible for the assessment of reports made and to ensure that fraud reports reach the right place.
The City of London Police is the national policing lead for economic crime and works in partnership with policing and other law enforcement agencies.